Ronnie Burlison says it’s the easiest way he’s found to have a conversation about the gospel. It starts with a simple question: What are three things God can’t do?
Sometimes people aren’t interested in hearing the answer, but often they’re intrigued enough to listen. When they do, “it’s a comfortable conversation,” said Burlison, a member of East Highland Baptist Church in Hartselle.
He said the answer is this — God cannot lie, God cannot change and God cannot let anyone into heaven unless they’re born again.
“This lends itself to a conversation about people’s relationship with God really quickly,” Burlison noted. “It’s simple and people respond to it.”
The method is called “3 Things,” and Burlison learned about it when Sammy Gilbreath, event evangelism strategist for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, encouraged him to check out a ministry called Serving Our Savior Events. Burlison was his church’s outreach director at the time and looking for ways to get more people at East Highland Baptist involved in sharing their faith.
Soon after, he and three other people were trained in 3 Things, and at an event at East Highland that fall, 20 people made decisions to follow Jesus. Not long after that, on a medical missions trip, 73 committed their lives to Christ.
“I said, ‘This thing actually works,’” Burlison recalled. “We’ve been at it pretty much ever since.”
He now serves as a missionary for SOS Events, setting up a tent at community gatherings, fairs and festivals to share the gospel.
Tens of thousands
The ministry has seen great success. As a whole, SOS Events, started in 2001 by Tom and Carolyn Curtis, has seen more than 70,000 people pray to receive Christ.
And for East Highland, it’s an outreach ministry for the entire congregation. More than 50 members are trained to share the 3 Things presentation. They saw around 300 make decisions at events in 2018 and more than 450 in 2019. And since the COVID-19 pandemic has died down, they’ve been seeing dozens more come to faith.
Walter Blackman Jr., senior pastor of East Highland, said it’s “been very good, very helpful for our church.”
“We’ve got a few folks … who had never done anything like that, and it brought them right out of their shell. Now they look forward to doing it,” he said.
Blackman has many treasured memories from events the church has participated in. He remembers at one festival visiting with some teenagers who had made decisions at the SOS tent the year before and brought their friends back to hear the presentation.
He also remembers one event where a woman visited the tent with a snake wrapped around her neck. He offered to hold it for her while she listened to the 3 Things presentation.
Learning more
Blackman noted the 3 Things presentation isn’t just something that brings people to a point where they can mouth a prayer and move on. If they are interested in learning more about the gospel after hearing the presentation, volunteers sit down with them at a table and counsel them through the decision and what it means.
“The Lord has blessed it; we’ve had a lot of people make decisions,” he said.
Many of the events they’ve been part of haven’t been in their local area, and Blackman noted SOS Events would love more churches to be involved in other parts of the state.
“It’s been a great tool for us to have a means and a mechanism to share with a lot of people,” he said.
For more information about training in 3 Things visit sosevents.org.
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